Tagged: Nebulae

Scott Raymond’s April 14 Secret Music playlist in tribute to Oophoi was especially comprehensive, and included tracks from all four of Oophoi’s solo and collaborative works on Hypnos. Thank you, Scott!

Here’s my playlist for Sunday, April 14, 2013. No show last week, as I had to work. On today’s show, I played several pieces featuring Gianluigi Gasparetti, aka Oophoi, who passed away earlier this week. A great talent gone too soon.

Scott Raymond
WVKR-FM
16 Penn St.
Fishkill, NY 12524

newage@secretmusic.net

Secret Music Playlist, 4/14/2013

Artist Song Album

Oophoi Drifting Into Blank Space Athlit

Celer A Small Push Into Exile Without Retrospect, The Morning
Max Corbacho Web Of Eyes The Ocean Inside
Eyes Cast Down Expanse Of Heart The Separate Ones

One of the toughest places for ambient music to break through on the radio is the syndicated Hearts of Space show. It’s a little easier for more melodic or “musical” sounds, but more difficult for the more abstract stuff. Nebulae has finally broken through to Hearts of Space, from their album The Path of White Clouds. Here’s the playlist (with thanks to Stephen and Steve for this).

Someone recently pointed out that one of our “classic” releases, Sonic Continuum by Rod Modell and Michael Mantra,
lacked mp3 sample clips for those users who want to listen before they buy. I’ve added some nice, long sample clips to that product page, but if you just want to hear ’em, here
are the direct links:

Review by “eyes cast down”“…plays like an urban version of the Solitudes nature series, built on unprocessed field recordings and mechanical
drones, embellished with darklit synth chords whose tone and texture sometimes recall Pink Floyd. The effect is that of a city-noir soundscape at 3am, with your back window
open just before (or after) the rain. The sense of urban location is uncanny and ñ unaccountably ñ mesmerizing. It doesnít make sense, it just is.

ìSubliminalî means ìbeneath the threshold of consciousnessî; you can listen to this album as quiet background, let it get under your skin and color your space. If youíre in the city ñ
especially if youíre alone, on a rainy night ñ these urban atmospherics can be your soundtrack, bringing the cityís slow, nocturnal pulse right into your listening space.”…

Reviewed by “eyes cast down”:“The music of Chris Russell and Disturbed Earth (Dean Richards)…
fully lives up to any expectations created by such a compelling and dramatic title. This album is beatless,
atmospheric and mesmerizing. Wonderfully-woven textures and bedrock drones irresistibly draw you in…This is ambient music in a very
classic sense ñ except for one point: Good luck listening to it as background ñ if you turn it down very quiet you
might have a chance. Otherwise, prepare to be held rapt for the duration. Highly recommended!…

New listings on the Hypnos Store from the Russian label, Monochrome Vision.

Arcane Device: Devices 1987-2007 (2CD)
(Miscellaneous category)
(Price: $19.99) Arcane Device is the unique project of American graphic designer and musician David Myers. An anthology of rare and previously unreleased tracks recorded over the past 20 years…(more/buy)

Francisco Lopez – Untitled (2006-2007) (2CD)
(Miscellaneous category)
(Price: $19.99) Francisco Lopez is musician from Madrid, active since 1980. His music is usually made from field recordings, using the environmental sound as the source for composition. These compositions can be absolutely different in both sonic and dynamic approach, atmospheric and fast paced fragments can be associated with real soundscapes and more abstract images. Sometimes it takes much attention, but finally tells us about art of listening, whether it is to noise or silence…(more/buy)

If, Bwana – Radio Slaves
(Miscellaneous category)
(Price: $13.99) Originally issued as a limited edition cassette Radio Slaves on the Medicinal Tapes (France) in 1986, then re-issued on CDr by the Generator Sound Art (USA) in 2003, this album finally released on CD with some bonus tracks. Loopy and sampledelic, it will return the spirit of 80s into your ears. Great collage music from the pioneering American experimental sound project. Radio Slaves album was recorded in 1986, when Al Margolis had just gotten the Casio sampler SK-1. It was cheap and easy to use, producing very short loops, probably only up to four seconds. Almost the entire recording uses that technology, loops completely populating the pieces. These works in particular make use of samples from the radio and vinyl as the main sound sources – the LP scratches heard on some of the tracks are meant to be there, as they are an integral part of this work….(more/buy)

Jason Kahn & Richard Francis (self-titled)
(Miscellaneous category)
(Price: $13.99) Recorded live during collaborative performances in various locations, consisting of four long tracks presenting the unique interaction between technology and intuition….(more/buy)

Asmus Tietchens/Kouhei Matsunaga/Y-Ton-G – YAK
(Miscellaneous category)
(Price: $13.99) Concrete sounds and abstract constructions, endlessly recycled and digitally treated – the new album by Asmus Tietchens, Kouhei Matsunaga and Y-Ton-G is bearing the idea of total remix work. Following the great tradition of mail-collaborations, the German-Japanese trio recorded this new series of experimental music studies…(more/buy)

Tomas Phillips + Dean King – Les Mailles
(Miscellaneous category)
(Price: $13.99) The duo of Dean King and Tomas Phillips came together in 2000 with the mere intention of exploring a shared aesthetic. Their aim was the achievement of a balance between digital and non-digital sound and a functional recognition of their differences in terms of utility and signification. Whilst computer technology remains central to their work, they make an effort to locate composition within a space of physicality. Hence the use of acoustic instrumentation and field recordings gathered on the periphery of laptops, they seek to foreground the act of listening in the slowly evolving tradition of microsound, without precluding the possibility of active and engaged harmony….(more/buy)

Maurizio Bianchi/Siegmar Fricke – Stroma~Konkret
(Miscellaneous category)
(Price: $13.99) Extra heavy fusion of industrial noise and musique concrete, this exclusive collaboration unites the forces of two legendary musicians who witnessed the roots of the industrial music movement. This album consists of three long tracks of mechanical aggression, clinical obsession and uncompromising psychic attack…(more/buy)

Bernard Donzel-Gargand – Still to be a Storyteller
(Miscellaneous category)
(Price: $13.99) 20-year anthology of creative work from the french composer, consisting of only previously unreleased material. Fantastic soundscapes, drawing images without any visual similarities and presenting the best ever sense of acousmatic music…(more/buy)

Several of our customer have been eagerly hoping we’d get the new stuff from Hic Sunt Leones (the
Italian label run by Alio Die) along with several re-stocks. Well, we’ve just added a big box of stuff to the Hypnos Store.

Alio Die & Mathias Grassow – Praha Meditations
(Hic Sunt Leones category)
(Price: $13.99) Digipak release. After the concert in Prague last year in may, we followed the proposal of friends to play some acoustic instruments spontaneously on top of the hill, in Troja, into a circle of stones installations. Zithers, Tubes, Bells, Rattle and Shells, Flutes..the sessions were inspired from the special place and the spring\’s vibes in the wind. The recordings that are a blueprint of the spirit of that day, were edited in studio by Alio Die, then Mathias Grassow added his electronic drones to expand the point of view and enrich the flow and layers of the compositions. The result in eight tracks, show how mostly static and repetitive balanced sounds can interact with our perception during the listening time, bringing us into an active and intimate quiet mood, softly absorbing us into some dream-like and time-opening experiences…(more/buy)

Alio Die & Zeit – Il Giardino Ermeneutico
(Hic Sunt Leones category)
(Price: $13.99) Digipak release. This third collaboration with Zeit displays a wonderful and unique combination between acoustic sounds, field recordings and airy gentle electronic sounds. The sonic result maintains the natural atmospheres of the original acoustic recordings, done at the time of the Raag drone theory\’s sessions in Lunigiana, Italy at Chiostro dell‚ÄôAnnunziata and the Wood Sanctuary in August 2006. Here the treatments enrich the mixture with a new sensible touch that subtly transports the listener towards an enchanted and multi-dimensional place for relaxation…(more/buy)

Alio Die & Parallel Worlds – Circo Divino
(Hic Sunt Leones category)
(Price: $13.99) Digipak relaease. This is the first collaboration by ambient master Alio Die with soundscape creator Parallel Worlds. the unique sound achieved could be described as a hybrid sonic world, made out of bouncing electrons and air vibrations. the modular machines of Parallel Worlds are merged with the acoustic instrumentation and drones of Alio Die, joined by the ethereal voice of the Polish vocalist/composer India Czajkowska, resulting in a surreal, yet down to earth, listening experience. The compositions, being, at times, minimal and calm and, at other times, full of mystical darkness and microsound elements, take the listener into a place were mental and physical boundaries have no need to exist…(more/buy)

Alio Die & Mariolina Zitta – La Sala dei Cristalli
(Hic Sunt Leones category)
(Price: $13.99) Digipak release. Using selected sound materials from Sonorous stones, Stalactites, Bat calls, Flutes, Field recordings collected by Mariolina Zitta in different caves in Liguria a Sardinia, Italy, processed and edited by Alio Die. In Lithos the drones are played by the authors on a set of long stones that goes in resonance, caressed by a bathed hand, by the same principle of the crystal\’s glasses. A very immersive and obscure traveling, an underground meditation with a ritual touch, in accord with the natural sound, despite the sampling and multieffect techniques used here. A deep listening experience…(more/buy)

Zeit – Waves from the sky
(Hic Sunt Leones category)
(Price: $13.99) The first solo CD by Zeit is a true revelation‚Ä¶ After two albums in collaboration with Alio Die having a more acoustic quality, in Waves fron the sky Tommaso Cim√≤ undertakes electronic orchestrations with inserts of guitars and bass perfectly integrated. You can find attachments with the best mystic and cosmic music of the seventies translated with a subtle sensibility into new territories of ambient music with a very fine touch.
Packaged in an elegant three-sided digipak…(more/buy)

2011.03.09

Time flies, and already several months have passed since our last release, Out and About by Herion. Today we’re very pleased to
announce our newest Hypnos release, yet again in the digipak format, and the first work by Italian trio Herion.

Hypnos is pleased to reissue this classic ambient album first released by the Stella Maris label. NebulÊ (previously known as “Nebula”)
is an European ambient supergroup of sorts, featuring Oophoi, Tau Ceti, Mathias Grassow, Klaus Wiese, Lorenzo Pierobon, Luna, and Mauro Malgrande.
This is a beautiful, ethereal and abstract ambient recording, which certainly deserved greater attention than it received prior to the demise of Stella
Maris, which existed only long enough to release two Nebula albums.
That first release was a limited edition CDR but our reissue is a professionally
manufactured CD in a beautiful digipak with new graphics.

The Path of White Clouds explores a serene and otherworldly soundspace. Meditative and gentle, these six tracks are sure to appeal to
listeners who enjoy the more spacious ambient works released by Oophoi during the height of his Umbra and Penumra sister labels. The sound
sources utilized here lean more toward the organic and physical instruments, and electronic processing and synthesizers are used subtly to
accentuate the rest.

In the years since this album was released, Oophoi has grown from just another new practitioner of ambient music to a recording artist as respected and
well-loved as any other. We at Hypnos have released other Oophoi works such as Athlit,
and his collaboration with Paul Vnuk Jr. (of Ma Ja Le),Distance to Zero. We also have an upcoming release The Martian Chronicles byOophoi with Seren Ffordd. Usually we focus on releasing
new projects, but sometimes a significant early work becomes completely unavailable. In a case such as this, the material strong enough taht we’re sure listeners will
feel it compares favorably with anything recorded since. The Path of White Clouds deserves to be heard.

Just added the latest Relaxed Machinery release
to the Hypnos Store. RM had already made available the download version but this
is the CDR version available exclusively through Hypnos

I’ve Lost – Sc·th M’anam (cdr)
(Relaxed Machinery category)
(Price: $9.99 cdr) Sc·th Míanam is the first album by Iíve Lost to be released on Relaxed Machinery. Sc·th Míanam is a Gaelic phrase, which can be translated as
ìShadow of My Soulî. The artist, aka Bobby Jones, chose this title by looking to his Irish roots. He explains the project’s motive:

“As a reaction to the unstoppable machine of technological advancements, I composed this album as a means to desperately hold on to, and express, my humanity. The
works are the result of an emotional, and subsequently human, response to the world. They are fragile, intimate, personal and genuine.”

In keeping with the artist’s historical role, Bobby offers the listener an intimate glimpse into his humanity – bringing to light those elements which may be lost, or considered
unimportant in the wake of social, economic and political changes resulting from technological ìprogressî.

More new stuff on the Hypnos Store today, this time
from another great Italian ambient label: Glacial Movement. Again, several items restocked as well.

Netherworld – Over the Summit
(Glacial Movements category)
(Price: $15.99) Three years after his first full length CD, Netherworld comes back with this new work titled Over the Summit, in which enclosed memories, feelings, and past experiences, deeply lived during the years and surrounded by an almost deafening silence, can be heard and felt circling vast mountains‚Äô snowy peaks. The underlined aspect is the sensation of peacefulness or contemplation of an uncontaminated and silent nature, wrapped in the winter‚Äôs white blanket. For the six tracks composing Over the Summit, the sound emanated by the Aurora Borealis has been embraced and manipulated for a work of art, melting it with ethers of orchestral fragments escaped by the perennial layers of Permafrost….(more/buy)

SKARE – Solstice City
(Glacial Movements category)
(Price: $15.99) An interpretation of a journey through a shifting landscape where the city meets nature. Departing from a distant and foreign shore, the traveler embarks a ship, uncertain of his destination. This prelude, introduced vividly in To the other shore, releases this pilgrim to further explore yet uncharted territories. Leaving all man-made conventions, the second track, Through Wind and Broken Ice takes us where the city imitates nature. Finally, a factory appears in the whiteout; a place where angels are manufactured as presented in the final track, The Snow Angel Factory. The vehicles used by Skare on this journey are field recordings, found sounds and treated and manipulated instruments….(more/buy)

Francisco Lopez – Amarok
(Glacial Movements category)
(Price: $15.99) For Amarok, two years of hard work have been employed using sounds and processed field recordings. After a few seconds from the track beginning we are dipped into an arctic trip which lasts more than an hour and in which tangled weavings in a masterly fashion handled by the Spanish artist appear, develop and dissolve. Gusts of arctic wind, the Amarok‚Äôs wheezing breath (Amarok is the name of a gigantic wolf in Inuit mythology) and the sense of loss in the polar night are only some of the sensations that this cryogenic hallucinatory acoustic is able to evoke….(more/buy)

2011.03.02

New Silentes label arrivals on the Hypnos Store! In
addition to these new titles, we also have many re-stocks on Silentes items.

Michael Mantra – Sonic Alter / Deepchord Remix
(Amplexus/Silentes category)
(Price: $13.99) This is a new re-working of the classic ambient masterpiece by Michael Mantra. For this version, Rod Modell (Deepchord records in Detroit) added rhythmic elements and further processing. Many brain-hemisphere synchronization techniques / frequencies are employed.With headphones, this cd has a stunning drug-like effect. An updated classic…(more/buy)

Michael Mantra – Amanita Lake (2 CD + DVD)
(Amplexus/Silentes category)
(Price: $24.99, 2CD+DVD) Two hours and a half of music collected on a double CD set that also contain a DVD video. Two long tracks of sublime and evocative pseudo-abstract and multicoloured ambient textures, built with discreet and repetitive background microstructures layered with continuous and infinite variations worked out from clusters of sounds and sketches of melodic sequences made of light sonorities, delicate and quiet as well, but also hypnotic and warm‚Ä¶ Fragile harmonies and mild dissonances in a timeless sonic continuum that enfolds and rocks the listener, among infinite spirals and floating waves in an everlasting movement. Another new, mind-boggling masterpiece, absolutely unmissable for all the lovers of Michael Mantra’s music….(more/buy)

Muridae – Under the Fable of Meaning
(Amplexus/Silentes category)
(Price: $13.99) A variegated and original universe of electronic visions; leading rhythmic parts, cosmic suggestions, echoes of filtered human voices and hints of concrete noises extraordinarily mixed with catchy electronic progressions, among pulsating basses, sequencer patterns and winning melodic arpeggios‚Ä¶ A surprising mix of ideas that draws from a wide range of stylistic influences, an extraordinary deep impact sound quality rich in dynamics, for an uninterrupted flux of incredible emotions…(more/buy)

Michael Mantra – A.L.B.E.
(Amplexus/Silentes category)
(Price: $13.99) Soft and dilated ambient atmospheres, minimal sonorities, floating electronic carpets‚Ä¶ A new, ‚Äúclassic‚Äù and fascinating album in the typical and unmistakable Michael Mantra style… Four long and suggestive tracks, to be listened at low volume relaxing in the half-light, just like a discreet and refined sonic background, or at an higher volume for a ‚Äúfull immersion‚Äù into warm and wrapping electronic soundwaves, to the discovery of intriguing and evocative sonic landscapes…(more/buy)

Enrico Conglio – Sea Cathedrals
(Amplexus/Silentes category)
(Price: $13.99) Five superb tracks of deep and evocative ambient music, enriched with echoes of ancient ritual suggestions. The immense spaces and the abyssal deepness of the sea, but also the sound of the bowels of the Earth, the color of the sand of the desert, the energy of the wind, the strength of all the Elements, the infinite cycle of day and night, of life and death‚Ä¶ A long circular journey through interchanging atmospheres that shake and capture, dragging with energy, then leave room for more quiet and soothing introspective stasis, and again become dramatic and overwhelming, A great, unmissable album of classic ritual ambient music….(more/buy)